coach-and-four
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of coach-and-four
First recorded in 1880–85
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It is a social engineering outfit masquerading as a tech firm, and it appears to regard social responsibility as an outdated piece of apparatus, a wooden coach-and-four in an age of tarmac.
From The Guardian
It was after a visit to some such mansion that Daniel Webster asked, "Did those old fellows go to bed in a coach-and-four?"
From Project Gutenberg
Asking who they were, she was informed that the party consisted of two gentlemen, who had travelled there in a coach-and-four, attended by a livery servant, evidently a foreigner.
From Project Gutenberg
There now, whilst she’s eating that cabbage a coach-and-four might drive over her——’ ‘Never mind, never mind; just run down and fetch her up quick.’
From Project Gutenberg
The end had come; the clock had struck twelve, and her fineries were rags, her coach-and-four was a pumpkin and mice.
From Project Gutenberg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.